The Pale Lunar Horizon
Mikhail adjusts the volume of his headset till it drowns out the tinnitus. Music really helps keep inspections like these vaguely within the bounds of being tolerable. Without the music, Mikhail is certain he would have lost his mind within the first week. He does so with one hand, careful to keep the other firmly on the steering wheel; the rover does not have great traction, and he would rather not get stuck out here. The scenery is desolate, oppressive even. It’s almost an assault on his senses, yet he presses on through the endless stretches of the featureless grey dust.
His shift is nearing its end; just two more sites and he can finally turn back to base. Mikhail slows down the buggy as he approaches the penultimate destination on his list, another one of those aging radio telescopes. Recently there’s been quite a bit of chatter about this particular telescope back home in Moscow. Some anomalous signal or some such. But Mikhail, for one, couldn’t care less. He was a pilot before Lunokhod, not a scientist, and all this astrophysics business almost made him want to go back to appreciating the lunar vista, or its lack thereof.
The rover slides to a gentle stop. Mikhail unstraps himself and gets off the vehicle with the generous assistance of the aft pallet. Even after a month, the suit and the gravity still mess with his head, making it tedious to even complete the simple act of standing still. Nevertheless, he’s slowly acclimatizing. Leaving behind the rover, he bobs himself over to the concrete reflectors, all to the melodious tune of Swan Lake. After an optimal sweep, satisfied with his findings, he begins his trod back to the buggy.
The music glitches. A few mangled notes drag themselves for a second before cutting off entirely, leaving Mikhail alone with only the dull sound of his own breathing to accompany him. “What the...?” he mutters, tapping on his visor, trying to figure out what just happened. He is met with deafening silence, not even static.
Mikhail decides to hail the operator before it gets too suffocating. “Zvezda, do you read?” he begins, “I think there’s some radio interfere-", but he never gets to finish.
He’s in the rover, driving towards the observatory, the pale lunar horizon in front. He slams on the brakes, bringing the vehicle to a halt. “What in the name of the Ever-Loving God just happened?!” he asks the vacuum. He doesn’t hear an answer. Not that he expected to hear one; that would’ve been horrifying. But still.
For a solid minute, he simply stares into the abyss where the sky generally is back home. He checks with his instruments and with Zvezda; no, he really is back on the rover. After a bit of deliberation, Mikhail convinces himself that he had just dozed off and dreamt up the whole ordeal, albeit in an unnaturally vivid manner. He chalks it up to his isolation and embarks on his course anew.
Everything seems to be going swimmingly; he reaches the observatory, disembarks, and begins his inspection of the telescope. That is until the music starts to break up again. He feels a sinking sense of déjà vu as he slowly turns towards the reflector. And in that
moment, the realization hits him like a speeding train. He was not dreaming. Greeting Mikhail was an entity that he could only describe as the manifestation of incomprehensible dread, a quasi-physical nightmare he couldn’t articulate into words even if he tried. He feels a chill run up his spine and grip his chest, smothering him like the silence around him. He tries to breathe, but his lungs seem suddenly unwilling to cooperate. His muscles scream at him to run, but it’s as if he has forgotten how to. Mikhail freezes, paralyzed by the overpowering presence and his brain’s incapacity to process what was before him.
He’s in the rover, driving towards the observatory, the pale lunar horizon in front. Mikhail is now positively petrified. The music is back again, but he can barely hear it on account of his heart drumming in his ears. He contemplates escape and jolts the rover around, accelerating towards the base with flagrant disregard for lunar safety regulations. He shrieks distress calls back to Zvezda, much to the alarm of the operator, who tries to bring him back to his senses. Unfortunately, the only sense Mikhail has at the moment is that of a hare being hunted for sport. Halfway there, the operator stops responding. A second later, the music cuts off.
He’s in the rover, driving towards the observatory, the pale lunar horizon in front. Mikhail tries to control his hyperventilation but fails miserably. He can feel himself shivering. He stops the rover and grips the steering till his gloves creak. The shaking stops, eventually. He plans to reason his way out of this. “Alright, this thing is probably an extraterrestrial; that’s why the Kremlin was so interested. So perhaps it is intelligent? Maybe I can reach an understanding with the anomaly!” he rationalizes. Incorrectly.
He arrives at the observatory for the third time, and this time, attempts to make a dialogue. “Look, I mean you no harm. I will leave you alone, just let me go!” He yells out beside himself, completely neglecting the fact that sound can’t propagate in a vacuum. The anomaly begins to materialize from the nothingness above the reflector, and Mikhail feels that unbearable weight settling in on his chest once more, before-
He’s in the rover, driving towards the observatory, the pale lunar horizon in front. Mikhail is running out of options; he can’t go to the observatory, he can’t return to base, and he definitely can’t talk to it. He decides his only hope now is to attempt to outrun the Lovecraftian nightmare. He isn’t very optimistic about his prospects, but what other choice does he have? He sets course for the observatory and punches his speed as he passes the site.
The swan in the lake dies once more underneath his helmet, as he begins to feel in every fiber of his body that same unforgiving grip. Even as he speeds away from the site. He feels invisible walls closing in around him, alongside the evolutionary fear of something chasing him and gaining ground, fast. His hands are shaking again. He knows it’s a horrible idea, but he can’t help it; he checks behind him. Nothing, just empty terrain as far as the eye could see.
He turns around; the observatory lies ahead. Mikhail stares with a mix of disbelief and defeat as the anomaly begins to materialize above the concrete structure.
“Wake up, you moron, you’re gonna be late!” yells the eldritch horror.
“Wait, what?” utters a confused Mikhail as he jerks up in a puddle of his own sweat, out of breath with a racing heart, as his roommate yells at him.
He was back at the base, with its familiar fluorescent lights and the muted hum of its ventilation system.
“Lord, it really was just a dream." he sighs with relief.
Three hours have passed. Mikhail is enjoying some brilliant music by Tchaikovsky as he drives towards the next inspection site. His shift is almost near its end.
The tune begins to stutter and subsequently cuts off.
Mikhail feels his stomach drop as he realizes once again that he’s in the rover, driving towards the observatory, the pale lunar horizon in front.
